DrinkedIn

Inspiration

We wanted to combine mixology and cocktails with embedded systems and hardware.

What it does

We would play a song, and as various colored LEDs would flash on and off based off high and low audio frequency, a set of homemade perastaltic pumps would released fruit juices into a glass. Another jar would contain "gin", and sparkling water, and fill the rest of the glass after the fruit juices reaches 100mL. Thus you would have a custom cocktail for every song.

How I built it

A lot of hardware, and embedded systems work! We are a team of computer science majors, but we have to do a lot of building that was mechanical & electrical engineering in nature, when attempting to build the machine.

Challenges I ran into

We went through 6 or 7 prototypes of the water pump, yet could not create enough suction to get the perastaltic pumps to work. We still have a demo of a lid that is rotating, and being controlled by a servo motor, for releasing a plastic pipe into a glass, although it was not originally intended. One of the prototypes was transferring some water, but had leaking which was why we couldn't install the design.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Although we couldn't get the pumps working in time, I was really proud of how many different prototypes we created throughout the weekend. We also got the audio frequency visualizer working which was half the battle. We also got a touchscreen that displays our logo working.

What I learned

We need to read more on fluid mechanics, when dealing with water. Debugging hardware, and physical mechanisms is an entirely different world from debugging software, which was what all four of us, as computer science majors, were used to.